Life is Pain
by Roaming Writer
Summary: This is a post apocalyptic world in which Chloe and Max tries to survive. Chloe tries to protect Max as much as she can, but will that be enough?


**Sorry if I'm not posting a lot, but its because I have way too much school work. I was working on this pretty long story, and I will continue to add chapters to some of my previous unfinished ones. This will be a single chapter story though. It is set in an apocalyptic world with the only LiS characters being Max and Chloe.**

 **Let me know if you prefer this type of story or the more "everyday" stories like my other ones.**

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DEEdeeDEEdeeDEE...DEEdeeDEEdeeDEEdee….. This sound bugged Chloe as she awoke for another day. She laid there for a few more minutes in a semi-sleep coma. Chloe had always been very sluggish, a bad habit she had ever since she was young. Before all...this. At least then she was happy, when her life was normal. Now she had changed, and became hardened. Hardened for the new world. She always dreamt about life back then. Back when it was normal. She glanced at the door. A calendar read January 2020. This calendar was accurate, or at least as accurate as her math was. Friday. This was the day to collect tinder, and so she got up and went to wash her face with some old alcohol wipes she managed to salvage in a run-down bathroom. Afterwards, she grabbed her Glock and counted the ammo. 1...2….3...4….5….6...7..8...9...10...11…12...13...14..15. She looked into the mirror, noticing her unkept brunette hair. She amused herself, imagining dying her hair blue.

"Alright a full clip, I won't need more," she whispered, trying not to awake Max, who was in the other room. Max was always a deep sleeper. The first time they "met" was when Chloe broke into her house trying to look for supplies, and the funniest thing was that she slept through all that. Chloe chuckled at the memories of long ago...when it all started. She soon got to know Max, who became her partner in the apocalypse. But Chloe felt that there was something more between them. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

She went outside the bunker and felt the sting of the hail and the icy touch of the snow. But Chloe never minded the cold. She came from Oregon afterall, and Oregon winters are as cold as you can get. She reminisced of her childhood in Arcadia Bay, especially the joyful bliss of Christmas winters much like this one. She quickly slipped on her gas mask. The bombs from the war contained radioactive debris. Chloe didn't know much about them, but she knew not to breathe it in. She remembered her friends who had perished in this radioactive fallout. Chloe didn't like these memories and tried to focus on the task again. She walked for a while, looking for firewood and supplies. Then she spotted some old wooden roof shingles fallen from a broken house. The house, though in ruins, was beautiful. It had a kind of aesthetic that Max would appreciate. She bagged this and as she lifted her head up, her heart stopped. She knew this could be his end. Her end in the middle of collecting firewood. Her death and Max wouldn't even know.

Chloe spotted a group of coyotes, normally a rare sight, but she wasn't surprised at anything anymore. There were ten, maybe fifteen. They were walking past her, cornering her between a half broken wall and a collapsed staircase. She knew that if coyotes found a more vulnerable enemy, an enemy they outnumber, an enemy they cornered, they would go for it. She slowly tried to climb up the old wall behind her, grabbing at loose bricks. One fourth of the way there, halfway there, almost…

"Crap" The brick fell loose and she fell about ten feet on top of hardened ice. It wasn't the fall that worried her; it was the coyotes. One by one they heard and charged at Chloe. One by one, she shot. CHIK CHIK.. time for reload. Then it dawned on her. She only took one clip. There were four more coyotes now charging at her, and Chloe ran for it, hoping to lose them. The coyotes bolted through snow and easily caught her by the left leg. The pain sprang through Chloe's spine and into her brain so fast her heart skipped beats. This blood lured the other coyotes, as it stained the snow. Chloe took out a Bowie knife and stabbed the coyote grabbing her leg. Three more remained, and they charged at her. She took another bite to that leg by a hungry coyote, and felt the most excruciating pain. She stabbed the coyote in the eye, and the two that were attacking her quickly retreated. Relief washed over her. It was over.

So there she lay, half of a mile from home, in the snow, leaving a red trail where she struggled. She looked around, weak from the blood loss. A good ten coyote bodies lay in the snow with her, with pools of red spilling around them. Chloe stood up and headed home. It was hard, not only the pain, but leaving behind all that good coyote meat because she couldn't carry it. Chloe had been through worse pain before and she managed. As she limped home, Max was there taking pictures with an old Polaroid they had salvaged in a junkyard. She didn't know why she was so into cameras, but she was happy that Max found a hobby in this fucked-up world. Max saw Chloe and became frantic. Her pretty face shriveled at the forehead like whenever she gets anxious. This worried Chloe for half a second, almost forgetting she had an injured leg. Max took the first aid kit and quickly rushed to Chloe. "What happened?" "How are you?" "When did you leave the house?" "How long were you gone?" "What did you do?" are what she normally says when Chloe comes back.

But this time she stood there silently, her face getting red and her voice cracking. After a moment of silence she blurted out, "What happened to your leg? Why weren't you more careful?" This hurt Chloe knowing how Max felt when someone she loves gets hurt.

"Don't worry about it, just patch it up; I've been through worse before," she said, trying to calm her down. Max started to take out the hydrogen peroxide, which made Chloe a little nervous. As she poured it over the leg, it seeped into the one-inch teeth wounds, and Chloe bit into her own shirt between her teeth trying to brace the pain. Then Max took out the sewing thread and needle.

"This is nothing like what I used to use in the hospital, but it'll do." Hours passed as Chloe lay there and got sewn up like an old teddy bear. When they were done it was dark at night and they blocked the doors and went to sleep. Now it had been two nights without food.

Chloe woke up in cold sweats in the middle of the night. She could hardly sleep, but now it became impossible. Her leg pained her too much to even react to the pain. The leg felt extremely swollen and hot. She needed relief, fast. She grabbed a AK-12 with a 100-drum magazine and limped outside the bunker, putting on her mask. Then she put her leg in the snow. The sheer exuberance she felt was indescribable. The searing heat of the leg was quickly extinguished by the cool comfort of the snow. But quickly, her bliss turned to terror, when she heard footsteps coming towards her. She grabbed her gun and lay there waiting for whatever lurked. At first, she thought it was a deer or an animal, but she was wrong. As she took cover behind a rock, she noticed shadows of people; people armed with RPG-7s and assault rifles. She saw that they wore a symbol on their suits, a symbol of a skull. She knew then that they were the Misfits, a group of raiders that are well armed. She stumbled across them before, seeing them executing a whole family after ransacking their home. The raiders recruited the most evil of all men, and they sent them out to terrorize survivors. She hid and knew that she needed to lead them away from the bunker, for Max's sake. Chloe limped from the bunker and took cover behind a broken car, trying to flank the group of five. She raised her AK-12 and aimed with the iron sights.

 _I need to kill all of them or else they will kill me and Max._

Then Chloe shot one through the head, killing him. Plop. One dead.

The others quickly heard the shot and became noticeable agitated.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" yelled a raider. "COME OUT," he hollered again.

Chloe stayed behind the car and hoped for luck.

"We saw the flash and heard the gun. We know you are there. You killed James and I am not going to let that slide. We will make you suffer!" they said as they advanced closer.

Chloe couldn't move far with her leg. She peeked out of cover and shot a few more bullets killing two more raiders. TIK TIK, a gun jam. Chloe went back into cover and tried to pry out the mischambered bullet casing but then.. BANG….DING. The pain kicked in slowly but surely. Chloe didn't realize it at first, but then looked down to see a hole the width of a thumb, through her lower abdomen. She had been shot through the car, and now she couldn't move, as if she were paralyzed by both the shot wound and the leg pain. She started to black out as blood pooled out of her stomach. She saw the two remaining raiders head towards the bunker.

"No, not Max," she feebly cried, as she slowly drifted away.

It was at this point that Max woke up to the sound of gunshots. When she heard the sound, she went to Chloe's bed, but no Chloe. She began to panic. She never dealt with these situations alone.

"What will Chloe do? What will Chloe do?" she asked, as if she were going to get an answer. BUM BUM BUM rang in her ears and she realized someone was knocking on the door—HARD. She remembered that Chloe taught her how to use a gun and she had been practicing aiming with a Beretta pistol. So she went and grabbed it, and hid under the bed. Then the raiders came. They went in the house aiming their flashlights all through the house. Max held her breath. They walked around slowly, with every footstep trampling snow all over the concrete floors. They went around taking guns, food, and whatever ammunition they could. Max heard them carelessly destroying furniture and breaking stuff.

"Nothing but garbage," they said as they left. When they had gotten far enough Max went to check for Chloe. When she went outside she became horrified and ran towards the bleeding body of Chloe. She sobbed and wept, hoping that all this was a dream. She cradled Chloe's head in her arms, and pressing her hands against her abdomen to stop anymore blood from coming out. She had nothing to do right now. No medicine, no supplies, nothing. Everything was taken from her. The bunker was trashed. She took off the bandages wrapping Chloe's leg and wrapping it tightly around her wound, knowing it would hold for some time until she could find help.

She felt around Chloe's neck, looking for a pulse...


End file.
